Readers' comments

Hear, hear! The Economist was once edited by libertarian Herbert Spencer. Now his heirs are helping American libertarians not be hoodwinked by the poseur Ron Paul.

Faced with an aging membership, and attrited by years of wandering in the wilderness at the outer limits of American politics, the Libertarian Party and movement have been trying a coalition with "patriots" and "constitutionalists"--many with racist or even terrorist baggage. Attending a "Future of Freedom" conference conference in the '80s, I hobnobbed with Tamil separatists and white racists. I guess Jihadism wasn't then in vogue.

Around 1979, almost 10 years before Ron Paul ran for president on the LP ticket, a tiny band of self-styled "radicals"--led by Murray Rothbard--took over the platform committee, and equated non-initiation-of-force with "non-interventionism-abroad". There is simply no basis for that equation in the libertarian canon, except for slight support from a few iconoclasts during the "fascist moment" from WWI until Pearl Harbor. None of the post-WWII leadership--from Hayek to Mises and Rand--were automatically opposed to US military intervention abroad. One of the minor figures in post-WWII libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, achieved cult-status by claiming credit for the "anarcho-capitalist" theory. Actually, he just dusted-off the old "competing governments" theory (originally "Jus Gentium") and re-labelled it. Murray then aligned the movement with first the New Left and then a mostly-imaged "Old Right". That's right, the same old "America First" crowd that was discredited by Nazi infiltration, and later morphed into holocaust denial and Willis Carto-style "populism".

So we see, the failure of 19th-century libertarianism to have a philosophic base (later provided by Ayn Rand) led directly to both the near-collapse of the libertarian movement post-Pearl Harbor, and now the warping post-9/11.

One of Rothbard's strongest allies on the platform committee for many years was none other than Dean Ahmad of the "Minaret of Freedom Institute", whose Zakat charity has been named by Russian intelligence as supplying Chechen terrorists as recently as 1999, and (from a private conversation with Dean) investigated by the FBI including a hacking of his website on or about September 11, 2001. Dean wants to change the US Constitution to incorporate Sharia law here. He once hosted convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian as a featured speaker at his 5th annual banquet. At his first annual banquet, Dean hosted an elderly Egyptian academic who favored the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional Islam governments. Coincidentally, Dean has been a frequent guest at the Pentagon and Bush Jr. White House. While not teaching Islamism at Johns Hopkins (for which he has no relevant academic degree), Dean serves as an immam at the Maryland State Prison and at a US military hospital.

Grover Norquist, another libertarian and conservative icon, is married to a Muslim and has worked with Muslims later convicted of terrorism.

The basic problem is that the political system in America is geared toward the two major parties. The Libertarian Party usually is able to get ballot access and some media publicity, and has a veneer of intellectual respectability. Others are tapping into that for their own purposes.

You have now had three opportunities �€“1996, 2001, and 2008 �€” to prove that you are a friend of Ron Paul and freedom, and you have failed to do so each time.

This week, for the third time, the puerile, racist, and completely un-Pauline comments that all informed people say you have caused to appear in Ron�€™s newsletters over the course of several years have become an issue in his campaign. This time the stakes are even higher than before. He is seeking nationwide office, the Republican nomination for President, and his campaign is attracting millions of supporters, not tens of thousands.

Three times you have failed to come forward and admit responsibility for and complicity in the scandals. You have allowed Ron to twist slowly in the wind. Because of your silence, Ron has been forced to issue repeated statements of denial, to answer repeated questions in multiple interviews, and to be embarrassed on national television. Your callous disregard for both Ron and his millions of supporters is unconscionable.

If you were Dr. Paul�€™s friend, or a friend of freedom, as you pretend to be, by now you would have stepped forward, assumed responsibility for those asinine and harmful comments, resigned from any connection to Ron or his campaign, and relieved Ron of the burden of having to repeatedly deny the charges of racism. But you have not done so, and so the scandal continues to detract from Ron�€™s message.

You know as well as I do that Ron does not have a racist bone in his body, yet those racist remarks went out under his name, not yours. Pretty clever. But now it�€™s time to man up, Lew. Admit your role, and exonerate Ron. You should have done it years ago.

After reading all of Ron Paul's newsletters posted in TNR, I feel certain Dr. Paul had written many if not all of them. It contains his sharp rhetoric rabid Ronulans cherish as well as personal references like "in my OBGYN practice..." and other tell-tale slips that points clearly to Dr. Paul as the sole author of these letters. For Dr. Paul now to deny authorship let alone offer the absurd notion he was not aware of these newsletters strikes me as insulting. Would a blogger today for instance disavow authorship of his own blog? For twelve years? In addition, if Dr. Paul didn�€™t write the letters, why did he claim authorship when Tim Russert quoted them in �€œMeet the Press�€�? )

This is the same Dr. Paul who champions personal liberty, individual rights, and personal responsibility. Dr. Paul would not be dumb enough, careless enough, and thoughtless enough to let anyone write anything under his aegis without his knowledge. In the least, as Tucker Carlson stated, it�€™s extremely negligent and that alone should raise red flags and alarm bells that there is something extremely aberrant with him and now his campaign.

I believe that Dr. Paul�€™s movement toward liberty, fidelity to the Constitution, and his philosophy of fiscal responsibility will go on and transcend him, even going as far as saying a future President will have been inspired by Dr. Paul, and it is good that his movement go on, but Dr. Paul's presidential bid is essentially toast.

Dr. Paul speaks of motivation for terrorists to do what they do, I believe we have now glimpsed Dr. Paul's private motivation to some of his personal crusade and much of it is fueled by anger, if not by hatred.

"If you step back, what's phenomenal is that the media, acting as one, took an ancient story that's been readily available to everyong for 15 years and could not gain traction because the words can't be attributed to Paul, and refurbished it as 'breaking news.'"

So, otherwise how are you enjoying your very first primary season?

"Well, if Lew Rockwell is a racist, he must be some new variety very limited racist. He has mentioned on his web site several times that he has an adopted daughter originally from China."

Yeah, who's racist against one race but not another? It just doesn't happen.

Well, if Lew Rockwell is a racist, he must be some new variety very limited racist. He has mentioned on his web site several times that he has an adopted daughter originally from China. And, he seems very proud of her.

It seems a pretty bald assertion that Lew had a hand in writing the newsletters. I understand circumstancial evidence is a popular path whenever your position lacks any credible evidence in it's stead.

No matter the circumstance. I think it is a bit foolish to focus on a decades old newsletter rather than focus on the policies Paul is espousing.

In my opinion, Mr. Kirchick is a Giuliani advocate, non-disclosed, and the timing of his article, as well as it's content is yellow journalism at best.

Ron Paul, and Ron Paul alone is proposing fundamental and specific changes in the way this country operates. Many people accept that not adopting these changes is a prescription for disaster: more enemies abroad, endless war, domestic spying, torture, hyperinflation, lost jobs and loss of overall economic competitiveness. A repeat of the Depression, only worse.

These changes require that the ruling elites give up some of their power. The ruling elites include the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the pharmaceuticals, the health insurance companies / HMOs, and much of the media.

When the ruling elites can't make a cogent argument against Ron Paul's proposals, they pull out the old tried-and-true cards: antisemitism, racism and homophobia.

If the rest of us fall for this diversion, we deserve the coming disaster.

Some elements of the material in question could be written off as mere political incorrectness, but other parts are much more difficult to dismiss. The author refers to black people as �€œanimals�€� and talks about a coming race war. If you don�€™t understand why this is scary, read about The Turner Diaries and the beliefs of Charles Manson.

These also weren�€™t limited to personal opinions and paranoias - at least one policy prescription was made, and this was known before the TNR story: the author suggested that black youth, but not white youth, who commit violent crimes should be tried as adults.

Henry P - The New Republic, who broke this story, ran a very favorable article on Paul by Tucker Carlson, who broke the story about the TNR story on MSNBC. So no, these media outlets were not ignoring Paul before this story broke.

And, as pointed out by saratoga2, the newsletters weren't publicly available before.

"If you step back, what's phenomenal is that the media, acting as one, took an ancient story that's been readily available to everyong for 15 years and could not gain traction because the words can't be attributed to Paul, and refurbished it as "breaking news.""

This is not true. I spent a good deal of time this summer trying to find the original documents, and everyone I spoke to told me they no longer existed. There were rumors of them, and people recalled bits and pieces, but until the new republic broke the story, the media evidently did not have access to the original material.

If you step back, what's phenomenal is that the media, acting as one, took an ancient story that's been readily available to everyong for 15 years and could not gain traction because the words can't be attributed to Paul, and refurbished it as "breaking news." And all these news outlets that had no interest for this entire year while the "Ron Paul revolution" has been gaining ground, suddenly, on cue, can't stop writing articles about Ron Paul ...

Remember when over fifty thousand people demonstrated in the streets in America and all over the country on December 16, '07? I watched the news to see how it was treated, and what was reported? That McCain was endorsed by what, TWO newspaper editors? Did this news outlet bat an eye on the day that fifty thousand plus people all over the country took to the streets for Paul and broke all fund-raising records? Was there a bigger story on that day?

You can watch this steady manufacturing of public opinion. They're throwing everything they've got at Paul at the most vital time. To anyone with an ounce of brains this story says much more about our media, acting as one, to make the public think whatever it decides we're going to think, than it does about Ron Paul.

I hope anyone reading realizes this news outlet is ultimately owned by one of the five mega-corporations that own all of our news outlets (all five of which endorse a common world-view)and that these reporters don't have free will. They could just as easily be harping on the fact that Giuliani is considered a coward and a fraud by NY firemen, or Hillary's very, very shady past with Bill, complete with a body count ... And then you readers would be up in arms about Giuliani or Hillary. But they've handed you this contrived scandal, so now you respond to the stimuli and get up in arms about Ron Paul.

Have fun being lab rats. You people go ahead and get excited about 15 year old photo copies while the American economy utterly self destructs ... I hope these news outlets continue to feed us thrilling, manufactured scandals, so we have something to talk about in the soup lines.

This is particularly interesting because the idea of personal responsibility for one's actions is so vital to libertarianism. I think this points out an actual larger problem, that libertarians have a hard time dealing with what "personal responsibility" means and works in group efforts, like a corporation or a newsletter.

I have read all the material in question. I come away feeling more that this is more of a political correctness issue than a racism issue. The style of writing has a tendency to "rant" in places but as far as the factual content is concerned, there is not much to complain about. Thomas Sowell has written material with similar content -- http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1576 �€“ as has Walter Williams -- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59371 -- yet if the author of politically incorrect views just happens to be white, then saying anything critical of people of other races is taken as prima facie evidence that he must be a racist. Why is it okay for black intellectuals to say something critical of blacks, but not okay for a white person to do so? If something is true, it is true regardless of the color of the skin of the author. So, which is it? -- Are Williams and Sowell racists and/or intellectual prostitutes? Or is there simply a lot of hypocritical politically correct reverse racism at work here?

Even if you choose to define "racism" so that those newsletters stand as proof that their author is a racist, it is very much a garden variety of racism that is probably harbored by a very large number, if not an outright majority, of white people. If looking at reality head-on and calling it what it is constitutes "racism," then make me a racist. (Again, I'm not vouching for the "ranting" tone in places, just noting that the factual content is generally not distorted.) However, before calling someone like me a racist, you should know that I have been happily interracially married for a quarter century.

I can't remember the details now, but I remember a few years back -- long before Dr. Paul's current presidential bid was on the horizon -- there was a fairly regular contributor to lewrockwell.com who got blackballed by Rockwell for making racist statements in his writings. Thus the current controversy strikes me as all the more ironic. Rockwell has been vigorous in shutting out racism from lewrockwell.com and it pains me to see him and Dr. Paul being painted as racists in spite of their vigorous opposition to racism. At a now-defunct Kinist website called Little Geneva, Rockwell and other contributors to lewrockwell.com were despised by Little Geneva�€™s Harry Seabrook precisely for having taken a stand that adamantly rejects racism as contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This whole tempest in a teapot shows that some subjects are taboo precisely because they are TOO IMPORTANT TO BE ABLE TO DISCUSS OPENLY. That�€™s a shame. If you can't discuss something in the public square without being demonized, it is a sure sign of a problem that is not going to get better. How can it get better if you can't even discuss it?

Be that as it may, I pray that Dr. Paul and the many good people around him will be vindicated of this slander so attention can be focused where it belongs -- on Dr. Paul's platform, which goes light years farther than anything any other candidate is able to propose toward fixing the single greatest perpetrator of social injustice in American society: the Welfare-Warfare State and the fraudulent monetary system that finances it. Ron Paul, on account of his policies, really is by far the best friend of economically disadvantaged people -- regardless of the color of their skin -- in America today.

The identity of Paul's ghostwriters is important, because if Paul continues to be associated with them then his claim to have taken "moral responsibility" for the vile content in these newsletters rings hollow.

If Paul really cares about the future of his beloved "freedom message," he ought to take real responsibility: Either name and forswear any affiliation with hateful voices, or do us all a favor and cease claiming to speak for the young people who have embraced his candidacy because they care so deeply about liberty at home and peace abroad.